Shouting into the void.

It's been 11 years since I've blogged, since I feel the need to record my thoughts in essay form. Why? Twitter, I could express myself on a variety of topics from entertainment to politics and I didn't have to do a lot of writing,  just a few quick sentences and then send it out into the universe, to be attacked by bots and trolls. But that was then and this is now, changes are a-coming and they aren't good ones.

The big question is, why did Elon Musk spend $44 billion to buy Twitter? What is his endgame? Over the past few weeks the answer has become clearer, and scarier. Being on twitter is about to become a pointless endeavor. I plan to keep my account active, since he says he'll ban inactive accounts but at the most I will be tweeting a lot less, and using that formally wasted time to blog. So, what is Musk's bigger plan? 

To start why did Twitter become so popular? The answer is the celebrity certification system. On MySpace and Facebook you could never be sure the celebrity account you were following was really that celebrity and not just some scammer. People loved the illusion of having one on one encounters with their favorite famous person. And the death of a celebrity, either real or premature resulted in a flood of grief notices. With every new verified celebrity Twitter traffic increased.

Second, shared experiences. In days of old if you wanted to share the moment with friends and family you had to invite them to your house, serve snacks and such and hope that they would go home after a reasonable amount of time. All of this changed during Super Bowl XXXVIII and the infamous "Nip Slip".  Millions of people were on line during the show and Twitter lit up with comments about Janet Jackson and the sudden exposure. After that live tweeting became a common thing, tv shows would actively promote their hashtag encouraging the conversation, and sometimes would even alter storylines when there were a lot of complaints about the way the narrative was running. "Spoiler Alert" became part of the lexicon as a result of live tweeting and the sharing of entertainment information, all from the comfort of your living room, alone, not having to clean up after a whole group of people.

Live news. In January of 1991 the United States, and the coalition, started a bombing campaign in Iraq. A group of CNN journalists in a hotel in Baghdad began shooting live footage of the impact (the military was watching to check the accuracy of their strikes) and millions of people watched. In April of 2013 two individuals set off a bomb at the Boston Marathon, several days later the police were in a shootout and hot pursuit of one of the subjects. During this time CNN was running a program on muffin recipes while millions were getting live updates from eye witnesses who were tweeting the entire event. Delayed tv journalism had been replaced by on the spot citizen reporting unfiltered news.

The 2020 election. In 2016 with the rise of Trump Twitter took a negative turn with the flood of disinformation from propaganda companies. The site was overrun with bot and trolls either promoting propaganda or harassing those who put out genuine information. The company was flooded with complaints and soon began to change their policies, by 2020 they began to wholesale block those who actively and knowingly spread false information from politics to Covid. In the end both the 2020 and 2024 elections saw a lot more genuine information about candidates rather than the hate spew from partisan accounts (on both sides by the way). Twitter seemed to be improving after a few dark years.

But then came Musk who for some reason was willing to throw away $44 billion on an app worth far less. Why would he go so deep into debt and then actively set out to destroy that very site? I have a speculation on why and how he plans to do it, and in the end make his money back.

Step one of Musk's plan, eliminate the blue checkmark certification of real celebrity accounts. Most celebrities are "them liberals" and promote liberal ideals. Once Musk takes away that safety net anyone can claim to be anyone and for $8 a month can have a blue checkmark next to their name. The site will be overrun with fake accounts operated by scammers and propagandists. Real celebrities will become frustrated with the number of clone accounts and start to quit. Once the celebrity aspect is gone their followers will soon follow. 

Step two, allow bots to flood the site. Musk will allow bots to swarm on the site promoting right wing political propaganda and harass anyone who counters their claims. Reporting these accounts will be a waste of time and anyone who fights back will be reported as "harassing" the bots and their accounts will be blocked or outright banned instead. Communication on Twitter will become one sided and the free exchange of ideas will come to an end.

Step three, block or shadow ban any information that runs counter to Musk's political ideology. We've already seen the start of this when people demonstrated the flaws in Musk's blue checkmark scheme by changing their names to "Elon Musk" and tweeting troll comments. He started blocking any account that used his name, but continue to ignore accounts that used other celebrities names. Then came the video of Musk being booed when he went on stage. Any time these videos popped up on twitter they were quickly blocked. You can expect more of this in the future, anything Musk doesn't like will be blocked or banned. The era of the free and fair exchange of ideas on Twitter is over.

This will clearly kill Twitter. Spambots, disinformation, blocking of information, no dissent allowed, within a year the site will become a ghost town and a noble experiment in total free speech will come to an end, and Musk (and his backers) will be out $44 billion dollars, or will he? The endgame of all this is to win the 2024 election and once extremist Republicans are fully in power they will award Space X, Musk's company, a major government grant to aid towards the eventual colonization of Mars, a large grant, perhaps a $50 billion + grant. One of the ideals of Nazi Germany was "control the messenger, control the message", Musk plans on controlling any and all messages on Twitter thus promoting disinformation, propaganda and the harassment of anyone who counters these claims with facts. And in the end he'll be rewarded for his loyalty. So RIP Twitter, you were sacrificed to the propaganda gods.